North Korea's Nuclear Test

This annotated commercial satellite image released by The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) in Washington on October 10, 2006 shows the suspected nuclear test site near the town of Chik-tong in North Korea as seen in a satellite image acquired from Digital Globe. The image, made by a Digital Globe satellite on September 17, 2006, depicts the suspected suspected tunnel entrance and support buildings as well as a VIP helipad and housing around what is believed to be the North Korean test site. REUTERS/Digital Globe-ISIS/Handout

Well, the North Koreans have done it--they have finally conducted their own underground test of a nuclear weapon. This is off The New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Monday, Oct. 9 — North Korea said Sunday night that it had set off its first nuclear test, becoming the eighth country in history, and arguably the most unstable and most dangerous, to proclaim that it has joined the club of nuclear weapons states.

The test came just two days after the country was warned by the United Nations Security Council that the action could lead to severe consequences.

What is especially interesting here is the explosion was the equivalent of 550 tons of TNT:

North Korea's nuclear test was equivalent to 550 tons of TNT, a state-run South Korean geological institute said. That is relatively small compared to the bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima, which was equivalent to 12,500 tons of TNT.

The real issue here isn't whether or not the North Koreans have successfully tested a nuclear device--we've known for years that the North Koreans have been actively building a nuclear bomb. The real problem here is that for six years, the North Koreans have been given what amounts to a free pass in their nuclear weapons research. Instead of a North Korean successful test of a nuclear weapon, what we really have here is a Bush administration's failure to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons. This is a Bush administration failure in ignoring North Korea's real nuclear ambitions for the fantasy Iraqi WMDs and the U.S. invasion of Iraq. This has been a failure of the Bush administration for ignoring the stockpile of Russian nuclear weapons material and for cutting the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program's budget. The Cooperative Threat Reduction was a simple concept which allowed the United States to purchase Russia's nuclear weapons material, then safely secure it either in Russia or the U.S. However, the Bush administration will cut the Cooperative Threat Reduction by 10 percent--$372.1 million from a fiscal 2006 funding of $415.5 million. Even the funding for diverting Russian nuclear scientists away from weapons programs into more useful programs is being cut:

The budget request includes $28.5 million for the Global Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention program, which seeks to redirect the expertise of former weapons scientists in Iraq, Libya, and the former Soviet Union toward civilian pursuits. The request is 29 percent below current spending of $39.6 mil lion. NNSA says the lower total reflects diminished program activity in the Russian cities of Sarov and Snezhinsk.

The budget request for the International Nuclear Materials Protection, Control and Accounting (MPC&A) program, which seeks to secure vulnerable nuclear weapons and weapons-usable materials, is $413.2 million, a 3.3 percent reduction from the 2006 appropriation of $427 million.

The Bush administration has pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, so that President Bush can create his own flawed missile defense system. The Bush administration has ignored the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, in favor of developing and testing a new generation of U.S. nuclear weapons. And while the United States is still a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Bush administration has pretty much ignored the NPT--they've ignored nuclear disarmament, and they have ignored the pledge of not using nuclear weapons on a non-nuclear country--namely Iran.
In one sense, this has been a PNAC neocon's systematic long-term approach towards destroying international nuclear non-proliferation commitments and disarmaments in favor of a U.S. arms race for a new generation of nuclear weapons. The problem here is that the destruction of these international agreements on nuclear proliferation and the next generation of American nuclear weapons will not make the U.S. any safer--it will not stop a possible terrorist organization for acquiring weapons-grade uranium or plutonium from Russia, or the Russian scientific expertise for sale to North Korea, Iran, Libya, or any other country that wishes to possess nukes. This will not stop the North Koreans from conducting further nuclear tests to refine their bomb-making abilities, nor will it stop South Korea or Japan from embarking on their own nuclear weapons development. President Bush's vaunted Missile Defense System will not stop a terrorist organization, or a country, from smuggling a nuclear weapon into the United States--all it would take is to place the nuclear bomb on a cargo ship heading towards an American port. Once the ship reaches port, you then set off the nuke.

There is a hypocrisy in this Bush administration—a hypocrisy of saying one thing, while doing another. The Bush administration demands that North Korea gives up its nuclear development while at the same time the administration has been embarking on designing and testing a new generation of nuclear warheads. This Bush administration demands that North Korea enter into negotiations with not just the U.S., but also with China and Russia at the table in a multi-national session, rather than the bilateral session that North Korea favors with the U.S. And yet in Iraq, the Middle East, and pretty much the rest of the world, the U.S. has embarked on their own unilateral foreign policy—rejecting multinational negotiations and agreements. The U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has certainly prompted Iran to quicken their own pace of nuclear weapons development. The other nations of the world view this hypocrisy of “Do as I say, and not as I do,” and have concluded that they too can behave as irrational and hypocritical as the U.S. is currently behaving.

These are the real failures of this Bush administration.